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- Title
Not without Skepticism: Metaphysics as a Metacritical Task of Theology.
- Authors
Bayer, Oswald
- Abstract
This essay explores the necessity of and limits of metaphysical thought, as well as theology's necessary interaction with metaphysics. Metaphysics' origin came through opposition to mythology, with which metaphysics is also intricately connected. Christian theology has a critical, but necessary, relationship with both. Metaphysics provides intellectual unity in the face of the diversity of human experience, which couples nicely with the mythological pantheon of gods. Aristotle's Metaphysics equated the divine with the unifying foundation of all things (ἀρχή). Metaphysics brings order to the world's chaos with a divinity that is not a subject, but a (neuter) predicate. Metaphysical questioning is necessary to human self-preservation but becomes problematic if divorced from other aspects of lived existence. Scripture itself raises metaphysical issues with its claims of God's oneness. Christ, and the communication of attributes that occurs in him, contrasts sharply with traditional metaphysics. This contrast is explored here in the tradition of Luther and Hamann. A re-abstraction of the concrete truth of Christ began with Lessing and Kant, and was brought to consummation by Hegel and his speculative Good Friday, which became a new kind of metaphysics. However, the truly Christian answer to metaphysics' longing for unity, is not Hegelian knowledge, but faith in the present, incarnate God's promise.
- Subjects
METAPHYSICS; THEOLOGY; SELF-preservation; MORTALITY salience hypothesis; JESUS Christ
- Publication
Lutheran Quarterly, 2021, Vol 35, Issue 4, p1
- ISSN
0024-7499
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1353/lut.2021.0091